Go! Go! Break Steady Review

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You know how it is when you’re expecting one thing and you get something else? Like when you pick a Revel out of the packet expecting the coffee creme and get that nasty orange one instead (you’re mad Stu, Orange is the best Revel – ed.). Sometimes it’s a pleasant surprise, sometimes it’s not, but it’s always a bit of a surprise. Well, Go! Go! Break Steady left me feeling a bit like that at first. From press releases and the usual pre-launch bumf I had the game pegged as a cool rhythm action game with an eighties breakdancing flavour; a kind of mix of Parappa the Rapper, Elite Beat Agents and Breakdance 2: Electric Boogaloo.

As one who lived with this stuff back in the day – I still remember my older brother practicing caterpillers, windmills and headspins on the living-room carpet before a big face off at the legendary local Scout’s disco – I was looking for a mix of groovy styles, casual charm and warm nostalgia. I wasn’t expecting anything brilliant, just something fun to pass a few hours. But there’s more to Go! Go! Break Steady than it seems. I’m not sure even Ozone and Turbo would have been able to make head or tail of this one.

Here’s how it works. Your breakdance crew (and it’s a pretty motley one) is entering a city-wide championship. In each stage they have to battle against a DJ, spinning out some mean tracks on the wheels of steel – as I think the young people used to say – and that means laying down some cool moves of their own. Basically, as the music plays, a sequence of colour-coded notes streams towards the circle in the middle of the screen. As you might expect, your task is to press the appropriately coloured button when the note is in the circle, which keeps your hero or heroine jiggling or spinning along to the beat in a way that my brother would have been proud of.